Start with the difficult and when it gets easy, everything else is easier.

I never met a librarian worth his or her salt who didn't perceive my passion for books.

Do you know what the difference is between Friendship and Love? Friendship is the photograph, Love is the oil painting.

I'd have to struggle to find a subject in which I can't get some kind of interested pulse started.

The one joy that has kept me going through life has been the fact that stories unite us. To see you as you listen to me now, as you have always listened to me, is to know this: what I can believe, you can believe. And the way we all see our story-not just as Irish people but as flesh and blood individuals and not the way people tell us to see it-that's what we own, no matter who we are and where we come from.

As an arts journalist in London, working mainly for the BBC, I interviewed hundreds if not thousands of authors. From them I gleaned a great deal of passing instruction in writing and I observed one fascinating detail: no two writers approach their work - physically - in the same way.

Marriage is the gold standard of all relationships. It's the currency by which everything is valued.